On Monday night, a Minnesota business owner named Beth Benike was watching TV when a political ad came on during a commercial break. She recognized the photo in it right away. She was in that photo.

Except she wasn't anymore.

The ad was from Brad Finstad, the Republican congressman who represents her, attacking his Democratic opponent, math teacher Jake Johnson. It used a picture of Johnson taken inside Benike's warehouse in April 2025. In the ad, Benike had been removed. In her place, HuffPost reported, was what appeared to be an AI-generated image of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, with Johnson giving a thumbs up to the camera.

You can watch the ad yourself, and compare it with the real photo that Johnson posted on Facebook the day it was taken.

Finstad's campaign did not respond to HuffPost. It did answer KARE 11, and the answer is worth reading closely. Spokesman David FitzSimmons said: "We have not violated any laws with our ad that highlights the facts that Governor Walz is endorsing and funding Jake Johnson for Congress."

Notice what that statement doesn't say. It doesn't say the photo is real. It doesn't deny that a woman was cut out of it. It says the ad is legal.

Who he erased

Benike isn't a random face in a crowd. She is a 10-year Army veteran who built a baby-products company, Busy Baby, that got her onto ABC's Shark Tank in 2021. In March 2025 she was named Minnesota's Small Business Person of the Year.

Nine days after that award, Trump's tariffs took effect. KAAL reported that three months of products she had already paid for were stuck in China, that she couldn't afford the $230,000 it would cost to bring them over, and that she had taken out a loan with her house as collateral to fill orders for Target and Walmart. Her ask was simple: "let us be exempt and at least stay in business." She became one of the best-known faces of what the tariffs were doing to small businesses — The New York Times built an episode of The Daily around her.

So she went to her congressman. According to HuffPost, Benike reached out to Finstad several times for help and says he didn't offer any. She tried twice to meet with him in Washington. He declined both times.

Johnson did the opposite. He heard her story and asked if he could come to her warehouse to learn more about the tariffs. That visit is where the photo came from.

"Can you make someone feel any less significant?"

Here is how Benike described seeing it, in her own words to HuffPost:

"My own congressman wouldn't even talk to me in my time of deepest need that he was directly impacting and continuing to make worse, and now he's using a photo taken at my warehouse and took me out of it? Can you make someone feel any less significant?"

"What a poor decision," she said. "It almost feels like an attack, like 'we'll show how insignificant she is.'"

Think about what the edit actually does. The real photo shows a candidate listening to a veteran small-business owner who was being hurt by tariffs Finstad supported. That story is bad for Finstad. So his ad deletes her and swaps in a fake picture of a politician Finstad would rather run against.

The tariffs she couldn't get him to talk about

Benike's complaint isn't new, and neither is Finstad's position. For most of a year, he kept telling southern Minnesota the tariff pain was temporary. We lined up those quotes in July: "short term" in April 2025, "disruption and uncertainty" in August, Trump as "the ultimate disruptor in chief," while he voted twice to protect the tariffs.

That's the record a small business owner wanted to talk to him about. She never got the meeting.

It fits a pattern. Finstad hasn't held a town hall in his district — but on the same August evening his opponent held a free one in Courtland, Finstad held a $250-to-$10,000 reception at the Mankato Golf Club. Asked why he won't hold town halls, he said people who want one just want to "have a hissy fit."

Constituents who show up with a problem don't get a meeting. Their photo can still end up in his ads.

Why a fake photo matters

KARE 11 noted it isn't clear whether the ad was made with AI or other editing. Either way, political ads get edited all the time, and cropping a photo is one thing. This is different: the ad takes a real moment, removes the real person in it, and inserts an image of someone who was never there, to make the opponent look like something he wasn't doing.

Finstad isn't the only Republican doing this. In Wisconsin, Derrick Van Orden has been posting fake AI videos of his opponent, and she has sent him a cease-and-desist letter.

Johnson's campaign spokesperson, Nik Marda, called it "fabricating fake photos because he can't defend his record." "He's trying to trick people," Marda said. "But the voters of southern Minnesota won't be distracted from Finstad's votes to raise prices, continue the Iran War, and give tax breaks to data center companies."

Finstad has a comfortable seat on paper. Trump won the district by 11 points in 2024, and Finstad won it by 17. But Johnson has kept pace with his fundraising, and HuffPost reports Finstad holds only a narrow lead in polling. A campaign that feels safe doesn't usually need fake pictures.

Benike told HuffPost she didn't vote in the last election. "I didn't think votes mattered," she said. "I learned the hard way, it does matter."

The bottom line

Brad Finstad declined twice to meet with Beth Benike, a veteran and Minnesota's 2025 Small Business Person of the Year, as she struggled with the Trump tariffs he supported. His campaign then ran an attack ad built on a photo taken in her warehouse, with her removed and what appears to be an AI-generated image of Gov. Tim Walz put in her place. Asked about it, his campaign didn't deny the photo was altered. It said the ad didn't break any laws.

Sources

GOP Rep. Brad Finstad Runs Attack Ad That Erases Critical Voter From Photo — HuffPost

Congressional candidate accused Rep. Brad Finstad of doctoring photo in campaign ad — KARE 11